General News of Thursday, 26 June 2014

Source: The General Telegraph

Hunt down Akrofi’s killers with dispatch - CPP urges police

THE Convention People’s Party (CPP) has called for a full-scale investigation into the murder of one of its leading members, the late Hayford Akrofi, and urged the police to hunt down the killers with dispatch.

In a statement signed by the party’s national chairperson, Samia Yaba Nkrumah, the party expressed dismay over the murder of Akrofi, and pledged its commitment to work closely with the police and lawyers to assist the family to bring the killers of their comrade to book.

The 60-year-old pensioner was shot dead by suspected armed robbers at dawn on Monday at Asofan Soldier Line at Achimota, a suburb of Accra.

According to the Achimota District Police Commander, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Peter Yembilla, the police had a distress call at dawn at 4:00 that some armed robbers were attacking some residents of Asofan.

He said a police team was dispatched to the area but by the time the team arrived, they had bolted.

He pointed out that during investigations, the granddaughters said the robbers armed with knives and pistol, attacked them at about 3:00 a.m.

They told the police that they were sleeping in the boy’s quarters when they heard a loud bang on their door. They continued that the two men entered their room, tied them and took away six mobile phones and an amount of Ghc60 before raping one of them and asked the other to suck their manhood.

DSP Yembilla said they later marched them at gunpoint to Mr Akrofi’s door and ordered one of them to wake him up on the pretext that the other woman was ill.

He stated that Akrofi on hearing his granddaughter’s voice, opened the door, and was attacked by the robbers. The robber demanded money from him. He responded that he was going for his wallet from his car. Then he was shot in the chest.

DSP Yembilla stated that Mr Akrofi’s granddaughters managed to free themselves but found upon reaching his room that their grandfather was lying in a pool of blood.

The murder of the CPP activist, according to the party, exposes the rising tide of insecurity in Ghana.

The party added that Akrofi’s brutal murder and the molestation of his two granddaughters reminds them of the urgent need for the country’s security agencies to review security measures for all Ghanaians.

Samia Nkrumah was of the view that Ghanaians must be concerned about the correlation between rising socio-economic stagnation and the crime rate in the country.

At the time of going to press efforts to get the police to comment on the murder of the CPP stalwart proved futile.

Earlier, DSP Cephas Arthur, Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Police Service, told this reporter that he was unaware of the case and directed this reporter to another officer.